The Surprising Results of a Humphrey Epiphany
by words end here
Summary: 'There's so much more than easy words or daydreams holding him captive in the city.' Dan/Blair post 4x11. Oneshot.


**A/N: **So it's not a _Taylor Swift _update, but you know, it's something. (: As you've probably deduced from my severe lack of updates, I'm all over the place right now and even whilst writing this I should have been studying for very important exams. I guess only Dair can transcend the importance of education, huh? If you read this oneshot I wrote a couple years ago – _The bizarre consequences when Blair Waldorf doesn't plan – _you may have noticed that this title is similar. What can I say? I was feeling nostalgic, and a tad self indulgent. These two have the same great potential and I feel they're the only couple on the show that do. ;) Your reading and reviews are very much appreciated.

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**The Surprising Results of a Humphrey Epiphany**

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* * *

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Dan doesn't particularly believe in the notion of inevitability, as comforting as it can be. As alluring it is to think that Serena was always going to shift her gaze from her glittering home; her glistening blonde boy and her dark, daunting best friend and fix her blue stare on an awkward daydreamer.

Add three years, and they're all repeating themselves again. They are, _we _are (he hasn't been the outsider looking in for some time, and there are times when he misses the mystery of it all). Serena has chosen Dan, _again, _and he's satisfied. He is. Serena had her choice, he thinks, but then this is a girl who won't ever really have to choose. Nate would still be at her side if she summoned him, and he would still be at her side regardless.

They are not sixteen anymore. Their choices don't feel as monumental as they did against a backdrop of high school competitiveness, and Dan is disappointed in himself, for having this girl love him and he hasn't run with her.

He could never run with her.

The reality seeps into his mind somewhere along a bleak night spent writing, his head in his left hand. He regrets not running with Serena, his first _my-heart-actually-hurts_ love. He dislikes the part of himself who has to make decisions for her. _I think this trip sounds like something you should be doing on your own. _

He knows he shouldn't be surprised; there was no-one who could keep up with Serena's speed. He blames it on the lingering mark only first love can inflict, thinks that surely that promise can be renewed.

Then he thinks again, like a record on repeat, _I didn't run with her, _and he's in such a state of pathetic sadness and disappointment that he actually approaches the Waldorf Brownstone.

* * *

"Serena better be in a dire emergency," is what she says upon his arrival, "because there is no other adequate reason for your presence right now, Humphrey."

"I...I'm kind of in a dire state myself, actually." Silence ensues and she delivers an up-and-down look that has torn many apart, and it works on him and he's left, rightfully, embarrassed. When she sees his cheeks brighten a little bit she lays down the weapon.

"I'm not a therapist for authors and their existentialist crisis, Humphrey."

"It's about Serena. Our one thing in common." He replies, all earnest, and it's been a while since she's truly saw that in anything, _anyone _in this city, so she has Dorota make tea.

"Has she said anything about me?" Dan asks, feeling about fifteen except he could never really ask anyone that question. Blair raises an eyebrow in amusement.

"Happy birthday Humphrey! Sweet sixteen!" She exclaims, so gorgeous and vicious.

"I don't know what to do, when she comes back." He says, knowing that this fit of honesty will no doubt return to haunt him.

Blair's playful meanness dissolves with that sentence, having her fifteen year old side been touched again. "No one knows what to do when S comes home Humphrey. I wish..." she trails off, so uncharacteristically. _I wish Chuck could stay. I wish S could stay. I wish someone else could stay. I always have._

"Blair, finish..." he hates it when people do that. He needs words, and right now at this moment her words are needed the most.

She shakes her head, almost child-like. "She had to do this," and it sounds as though she's correcting herself. "Why didn't you go with her?"

The question he came here for to be answered has been asked again and his temper flares and he grows angry with himself all over again.

"I just, I don't know how it got this place." Is his feeble reply, and she's slightly scared by how of her she can see in Humphrey, _Humphrey, _in this moment.

She thinks about taking his hand, fleetingly, to provide some sort of comfort, before she reminds herself that she's Blair Waldorf. And Blair Waldorf knows better than anyone else, how to follow the rules. How to hide.

"Like I said...I can't be dealing with wanna-be writers and their crises." She smiles sardonically. He sends one of his one back.

"Listen, you're right. I shouldn't be here and I shouldn't be with Serena either." His tone sifts from sadness to certainty.

"Humphrey, I'm not going to lie to you. You and S have never made sense to me, but I think we both know by now that things making sense became impossible a long time ago."

"I always knew you were team Nate." Dan smiles, doesn't dwell on how ironic and strange all of this is.

"I still am." She admits, grinning wickedly. "But I know they can't make each other happy right now. Not for a while, probably. They both need to be alone for a while. Frankly I think you need to be, too."

"So now the advice arrives, huh?"

"I've been making a few changes of my own. I told Chuck that I need to put myself first. I've been defined by him too long." She casts her eyes down. Honesty only hurts when she's honest with herself. "Two years ago you told me to take a risk and I did. It hurts ever day and all I can do is feel it."

He's transfixed by the vulnerability beneath the veneer.

She asks him if he wants a stronger drink. He obliges and they spend that night alone, together.

* * *

Blair wants to be surprised that Serena has departed, run away, again.

Of course, she's not. Serena strays, leaving mystery, marred hearts (and usually one hell of a mess) in her wake. Blair remembers dropping their photo – the three of them, the brunette cosseted between her two favourite blondes, they were fresh-faced fifteen year olds. Blair watched the frame spin as she tossed it out of her bedroom window to the street below.

Melodramatic, she knows. Then she also knows that she does it better than anyone else.

That memory is so very vivid, like all the other scenes she has made-up and preserved in her head. Like the scene where she and Chuck declare themselves, fools to ever think three words were enough. That they ever could be.

So maybe Humphrey is aware of the fact that he's not the only depressed dreamer right now.

She hates how displaced she feels; she's tossing in her bed, she's calling Chuck her friend and she doesn't know what S is really racing away from now.

All that needs to happen to make her feel fifteen again is Nate (Humphrey right behind him), strolling through the door with bone-dry lattes and a _morning, sweetheart _hug as Humphrey looks at her all too disarmingly.

She wonders how they went to sharing Nate to sharing Brooklyn.

* * *

Blair decides to return the favour when she orders her driver to Brooklyn. Going there doesn't feel as strange as it probably should.

There's a warm silence between them when she sees that he has in fact, converted Vanessa's room into a quasi, sort of office.

"Can't say I've been expecting you, Waldorf." He greets, awkward but welcoming.

"I showed up at your door randomly before and that seemed to work out," her thoughts verbalize themselves but she doesn't regret it, the way she has so many times before. "Listen, Humps, before you read Gossip Girl, that is if you haven't already-

"I saw the photos of Serena and Ben." He says, oddly detached.

She nods, slow and understanding. What concerns him most is why she decided to venture over to Brooklyn just to inform him.

"You were there for me with Chuck a while back...you've been here for me." She states, knowing that he already knows what is being implied.

He doesn't know what possesses him when he asks her to read this short story he had down within the space of two hours. It's a whole lot of nothing, really, and he knows he couldn't have chosen someone more scathing to deliver a critique.

Blair is honest though, and that's what he wants more than anything.

Not that he actually feels _lied to_ by Serena; rather that he's feeling particularly unfulfilled. He knows he shouldn't be surprised. She was something he should have quit a long time ago.

"I'll read this later tonight, Humphrey." She says, of course craving that he's seeking her approval, somehow. She puts the pages into her bag and sits.

"I wanted to say, Dan, that you can talk to me about S."

"I know there's no better expert on the subject." He smiles and she returns one of her own.

The strange part is; Serena doesn't sprout into conversation after that, and she removes the pages from her bag again and reads him his story.

* * *

She wakes up with her head on his shoulder.

His arm is looped around her.

(And they were perfectly _sober.)_

She retrieves her red Jimmy Choos and runs.

* * *

Dan doesn't allow himself to be surprised that Blair left, but it doesn't stop him from feeling a little jab of disappointment.

He texts her _coffee? _At noon and she agrees.

They're spending too much time together.

This will not end well.

* * *

"Last night," Dan begins, handing her the cup, but he doesn't get to finish.

"We won't speak of it." Blair replies coldly, with a kind of mischievousness in her eyes that implies that they did something wrong.

Which they didn't.

That isn't what Gossip Girl has to say, though.

Blair finds herself thrilled when she reads the post though, in a sixteen-year-old-and-utterly-scandalous Blair Waldorf kind of way.

She feels like herself.

She doesn't attribute that to Humphrey, but she thinks, every time he looks at her, that he just _knows._

_

* * *

_

He's writing again when he realises that the words on the page just amount to a thinly veiled Waldorf and himself, stuck in the city.

This is what happens when Humphrey has an epiphany.

* * *

They go in anticipation to their orang-utan movie.

Whenever she lets herself laugh into his shoulder, he buzzes.

* * *

They don't go for drinks. Instead she calls a car and deposits him home.

Part of him thinks, _oh crap, why is she looking at me? This is Blair. My friend, Waldorf._

Then he considers what he'd feel if she looked at him any differently, and he doesn't like that possibility.

She wants to kiss him.

If only once. Just to find out what is so loveable about him. To find out why the nickname _lonely boy _is completely ironic at this point. To find out what kept pulling Serena back.

To find out whatever this boy has that's been able to make her laugh and smile.

She doesn't though.

Not in a limousine.

* * *

Blair wakes up that night alone, sheets twisted around her.

She doesn't know why she starts thinking about the summer that Nate and Serena were left here alone in the city, fifteen and fulfilling a prophecy that Chuck knew all too well and Blair herself ignored.

* * *

"Give S a couple of days and she'll be back," Blair muses, Dan typing frantically away in the background. "Back and ready to give you another chance, Humphrey."

The typing stops as she picks up her coat, ready to leave. _Now or not at all, Humphrey._

There's so much more than easy words or daydreams holding him captive in the city.

He grabs her arm and holds her back from the door.

"I doubt that, Waldorf."

The coat falls to the floor.

He presses his lips to hers she smiles against his kiss.


End file.
